This is the Doctor's darkest hour. He'll rise higher than ever before, then fall so much further. This is the day he finds out who I am.

—River Song

Night will fall and drown the sun, when a good man goes to war.

Friendship dies and true love lies, night will fall and the dark will rise... when a good man goes to war.

—River Song

The finale of the first half of series 6. "Spoilers!"

Last episode, we found out that the Amy we've been seeing was not, in fact, Amy. It was an avatar, making her constantly believe that she was walking around unharmed, while her real self was held captive in a place called Demon's Run. She's given birth there to a baby girl named Melody, guided by Madame Kovarian—the eyepatch lady—and surrounded by an entire military. But she's not scared. Because she knows that the baby's real father will come for them. A man who has travelled across the galaxy. A man who has lived for centuries. A man known as the... Last Centurion.

The soldiers are quite nice, actually, and simply believe that the Doctor is a fearsome warrior that should be killed. That doesn't mean they can't be his fanboys, too. One of them, Lorna from the Gamma Forest, met him once when she was young and only joined so she could see him again. She's happily embroidering a little piece of cloth with the words "Melody Pond", as a religious good luck charm for Amy.

The Doctor and Rory (dressed magnificently in his Last Centurion gear) prepare to raise an army. On his quest, Rory defeats a random Cybermen fleet without even a hint of fear. In her cell in Stormcage, River Song sadly acknowledges that the time has come at last. Today will mark the Battle of Demon's Run and the Doctor's darkest hour. Both sides will make their sacrifices and River Song must finally reveal her most closely guarded secret to the Doctor: her identity. She's unusually happy to see Rory, but she can't come with him.

Lorna sneaks out, finds Amy and hands her the little embroidered cloth. Amy is too traumatised to talk to her much.

The Headless Monks, a religious faction, are seemingly allied with the Demon's Run army, but the Doctor interferes and starts manipulating the soldiers effortlessly. As Amy watches, he vows to rescue her. "Amy, get yer coat!"

Rory, still in Centurion gear, reunites Amy and little Melody while crying Manly Tears. The Doctor follows soon after. He talks to young Melody for a bit ("I speak Baby. I speak everything.") and the two quickly bond. The Doctor gives Melody a little Gallifreyan baby cot. Amy asks him where the hell he got that from. Why would he have a baby cot? Did he have kids? Does he have kids right now? He mumbles a bit of denial before revealing that alright, yes, it'shis... cot. From when he was a baby. And little Melody will be quite safe.

Chaos quickly ensues again, however, and the Doctor is questioned by everyone on whether or not he's responsible for the child. Because it's got Time Lord DNA. And there are not a whole lot of ways for little babies to become half Time Lord. Simply put, when a girl travelling with a Time Lord has a half Time Lord baby, people tend to draw conclusions.

The Doctor is genuinely confused, because no, he did not sleep with Amy. And he can't see any way for the child to be part Time Lord, even when it's pointed out by Vastra that the Time Lords themselves evolved from continuously being close to the time matrix. That doesn't apply here, he states, because Time Lords evolved over billions of years, not just nine months. And even if this baby was somehow influenced by Amy being in the TARDIS, it's just not how evolution works. Besides, how could it even have been conceived on the TARDIS? Rory wasn't there, and then he was dead, and then he never existed, and then he was a plastic Roman for two millennia, and then it was their wedding n--

Oh.

The Doctor realises quite suddenly why Amy was so worried about her baby being messed up by the time stream or having a "time head" or something. Little Melody was conceived on the TARDIS, and the TARDIS added quite a bit of her own creative influence to the baby's DNA. And now this Time Lord baby will be raised as a weapon against him.

The Doctor: Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?Vastra: They've seen you.

As the Doctor's makeshift army confronts the soldiers of Demon's Run, Lorna is shot. The Doctor rushes to her side and tells her to be brave. Of course he remembers her. They ran together, years ago. She dies in his arms. He quietly has to ask who she was, because he hasn't met her yet and he remembers everyone.

By now, the Doctor has gotten into a habit of hugging Amy tightly, and rubbing her back, while he's talking to her. With permission from Rory, of course. Because he can only give her one nasty revelation after another: little Melody is not little Melody. She's made of the Flesh, and the real baby is far, far away by now.

And then, just as the Doctor's friends are dying all around him again, River appears. And the Doctor is very genuinely angry with her. He's beyond Tranquil Fury and gone off into plain old rage. Why did she wait this long to show up? Why did she do nothing to prevent all this? Why is she just standing there? This carnage, this drama, this isn't him. River quietly replies that he's wrong. This is him. Gathering people around him, changing their lives, making them sacrifice themselves for him. As for the Demon's Run army: in the Gamma Forest language, "Doctor" has become the word for "Mighty Warrior". The Doctor's reputation has made him into a demon in the eyes of entire cultures. He's a true Memetic Badass, and they've become so scared of him, they're going to kill him out of sheer terror.

Almost blind with anger, he orders her to stop lying to him and to finally explain who she is. She takes his hands and leads him towards the baby cot. He looks down at his old cot, at the Gallifreyan text, at his little kinetic baby toy mobile. He looks up at River. He looks down again. And he starts to happily make incoherent Squee noises while she grins and nods at him.

It's all still a bit confusing to him—they've kissed and everything, and that's just weird now—but he's too busy being flabbergasted to even care anymore. He waves goodbye to the Ponds, promises to find little Melody, gets in the TARDIS and gives River one final Squee before dashing off. River can take the others home.

Amy has a full-on Heroic BSOD at that. She picks up a gun and prepares to shoot River right then and there. River calms her down with some effort, and tells her to take another look at the Doctor's cot. Because with written text, the TARDIS translation matrix can take a while to kick in. No, not the Gallifreyan text on the cot -- the TARDIS doesn't translate ancient Gallifreyan anyway. River means Lorna's beautifully embroidered cloth, and she shows it to Amy and Rory. The only water in the forest is the river. In Lorna's Gamma Forest language, the elaborate embroidered text says "Pond" on one side, and "Melody" on the other. "River", and "Song".

Action Prologue: The first four minutes of the episode has Rory infiltrate a Cyber-man fleet, and the destruction of said fleet. All before the title runs.

Adult Fear: Your baby daughter is a really a ganger, and she melts away in your arms.

Amy's baby is taken from her and all she knows is that the kid will be raised as a living weapon. There's also that chilling part at the beginning, when Amy holds her daughter and tells her how she wishes she could promise to protect her. And then the soldier tells her she has two minutes left before they take the baby away.

In a blink-and-you-miss-it example, having your spouse suddenly murdered, when you'd clearly thought that they'd been out for something innocuous and would be back by dinner, as the Thin Gay Anglican Marine did. While being converted to an order of Headless Monks is a bit of a Space Whale Aesop, you could easily apply the situation to something more mundane, like going out to the store or to a meeting at work.

Also, when Amy pick up some sort of tool (that looks like an electric toothbrush) in response to a knock on the door of her room

Amy: "I'm armed, and dangerous...and...cross!"

The Atoner: It's implied that Madame Vastra was murdering homeless people to avenge her sister before the Doctor found her and convinced her to become a Serial Killer Killer. Strax is introduced working as a nurse as some ill-defined punishment.

Avengers Assemble: We only see a handful of the people the Doctor calls in his marker for, but doing everyone would've been an episode all its own.

Baby Language: The Doctor can speak it, apparently. What's hilarious is the lines of the one sided conversation he has with little Melody. Includes, "Really, you should call her mummy, not big milk thing," "It's my hair, it's real" and in regard to the bow-tie, "No, it's cool."

The Doctor: "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many."

The Doctor: "Amelia Pond, get your coat!" (In context.)

Badass Family: The Pond-Williams, consisting of Amy, who tells her captors to be very, very afraid of what's coming for them, Rory, who gets up in the grill of an entire Cyber Legion, and Melody, who grows up to be a woman that makes Daleks beg for mercy.

The Bad Guy Wins: Think about it. Whatever nefarious purpose Madame Kovarian wanted to achieve by kidnapping Baby!River set a chain of events that makes her a terrifying Action Girl whose mere name even causes fear in the heart of a freaking Dalek. River will still kill that good man, who in all likelihood, was Kovarian's target to begin with.

More immediately, Madame Kovarian gets away with the real baby.

Bait and Switch: At the beginning it seems as though Amy is talking about the Doctor when she's telling little Melody about the man who's coming to help them. She's actually talking about Rory:

Amy: "He's the last of his kind. He looks young, but he's lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. And wherever they take you Melody, however scared you are, I promise you you will never be alone. Because this man is your father. He has a name, but the people of our world know him better...as the Last Centurion."

When Amy asks the Doctor to please, please tell them what's going on his head re: Melody, he replies "It's mine," - and then clarifies that he was talking about the cot he found for her in the TARDIS.

Beware the Nice Ones: It's what the episode title means, so you can expect a lot of it. Rory kicks much ass and the entire episode is basically showing us this about the Doctor. The 'Colonel Runaway' scene and his What the Hell, Hero? to River are all about showing the Doctor when he's really at the limit of his restraint.

The Doctor: "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many."

As Rory notes in the opening teaser;

Rory: I have a message and a question. A message from the Doctor... and a question from me. Where. Is. My. Wife?! Oh, don't give me those blank looks! The 12th Cyber Legion monitors this entire quadrant. You hear everything. So you tell me what I need to know, you tell me now. And I will be on my way...Cybermen: What is the Doctor's message?

The entire fleet explodes*

Rory: Do you want me to repeat the question?

Big-Budget Beef-Up: Series 6 has maintained the new programme's reputation for excellent special effects but they take it up a notch for the mid-series finale with appearances from several old enemies and allies, and CG effects galore.

Big No: Colonel Manton, when all hell breaks loose between the clerics and the monks.

and a bit more with gangers, this time having a baby explode into goop.

Break the Cutie: Amy Pond has to deal with this while she's alone on Demon's Run, mostly involving her baby. Of course, we've seen Amy snap before, so we know this isn't a good idea. Cue Beware the Nice Ones, Mama Bear, and most other revenge tropes.

When listing the reasons its impossible that Amy and Rory would have had time to produce a baby on the Tardis the Doctor mentions "sexy fish vampires".

Cardboard Prison: Really... River can just waltz in and out (literally), use the phone to announce she's breaking in and order room service, and can gallivant off whenever she pleases. A Cardboard Prison would actually be more secure than what she's in right now.

Chaste Hero: The Doctor is completely oblivious to the notion that Melody might have been conceived in the TARDIS until pushed by Madame Vastra. He works through the fifth season and comes to the realization that the first time they were together on the TARDIS after the reboot was... their wedding night.

Chekhov's Gunman: Lorna. When she first appears, she just seems like a young soldier being nice to Amy. Then Lorna gives Amy the leaf, which shows up at the end for the final revelation.

Cherry Tapping: The Doctor wants Colonel Manton to order his men not to fall back, but to "run away". For the rest of his life, he would be known as Colonel Run-Away - to show what happens when you mess with the people the Doctor cares about.

Christianity Is Catholic: Averted. Even though the sect called the Headless Monks follow decisions made by a "Papal mainframe", their Anglican allies are portrayed as a different sect where, if one of their number needs to join the former, they must first convert.[1]

Combat Medic: A Sontaran nurse. It started out as a punishment for something his clone-batch did, as taking care of the sick and weak is a Sontaran's idea of the perfect humiliation. In spite of that, he seems to have grown to like it.

Boy: "Will I be okay?"Strax: [cheerfully earnest] "Of course you will, my boy, you'll be up and around in no time. And perhaps one day, you and I shall meet on the field of battle, and I will destroy you for the glory of the Sontaran Empire!"Boy: [Beat] "Thanks, nurse."

And:

Strax: "Captain Harcourt, I hope someday to meet you in the glory of battle, where I shall crush the life from your worthless human form. [Beat] Try and get some rest."

And let's not forget the other nurse who also happens to be the Last Centurion...

Deconstruction, of sorts: It shows the consequences of The Doctor's having become a near Memetic Badass, with villains becoming scared at his very name: The villains have become so terrified of The Doctor that they're willing to kidnap a new born baby of his loved ones no less, and raise and turn the child against him; River even explicitly points out that the word "Doctor" means, well, "doctor" all through the universe, but in some places it means "warrior" instead.

On a different note, Strax's penance as a Nurse and how it plays out is rather unexpected from what we've seen of the (sometimes absurdly) militaristic and prideful Sontarans - a different working environment is apparently all it takes for a sympathetic outlook of other races (although the "glory of battle" bit is probably innate).

The Determinator: Rory, of course. Heaven help whoever is between him and Amy this time.

Although the title is something of a subversion. It, of course, is implied to be the Doctor, but really it may as well be Rory.

Explain, Explain, Oh Crap: The Doctor insists that the baby can't have been conceived on the TARDIS. I mean, they spend far too much time running around fighting monsters for...that sort of thing, and anyway, in this version of reality they were never on the TARDIS together until their w-

River Song: "Demons run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun, when a good man goes to war. Friendship dies and true love lies, night will fall and the dark will rise...when a good man goes to war."

The poem has two more lines in the episode.

Demons run but count the cost. The battle's won but the child is lost.

"The only water in the forest is the river." The TARDIS said this while she was spouting gibberish, didn't she?

"'Melody Williams' is a geography teacher, 'Melody Pond' is a superhero." Yes, actually, she is.

Genre Savvy / Only Sane Man: Dorium seems to be a rare antagonist version, in that he is the only one that realizes that antagonizing the Doctor is a really bad idea. He retains this after we find out he's working for the good guys, pointing out how they cleared out the fortress far too easily.

Dorium's savviness seems to degrade some when he walks up to the menacing Headless Monks, thinking that because they know him, they'll let him go. He does this after observing that they're chanting their war hymn.

When it looks like the Doctor is trying to start a shoot-out between his men and the monks, Manton is the first person to discharge his gun's battery as a sign of good faith. "We are not fools." He just had no way of knowing about the Doctor's real plan.

Keep in mind that Madame Kovarian's entire reason for kidnapping Amy's child is so she can be raised as a weapon against The Doctor. That they are so terrified of him they are willing to harm his Nakama to do it. When The Doctor invades Demon's Run, Madame Kovarian is quaking in fear from being in the Doctor's presence. She doesn't even start her Evil Gloating until she is far, far away from The Doctor.

Lorna met the Doctor when she was a kid. He's going to meet her again and have to know she's going to die in a few years.

Madame Vastra: "Oh, all mammals look the same."Jenny: "Gee, thanks."Vastra: "Oh, I'm sorry dear, did I say something insensitive again? I don't know why you put up with me."[cue a six foot long tongue whiplash to subdue a prisoner]

The exchange between River Song and Rory in the Stormcage Prison.

Rory: "I've come from the Doctor too."River: Yes, but at a different point in time."Rory: "Unless there's two of them."River: "Now... that's a whole different birthday."

Or before that, when she sees Rory in the shadows and can only make out his Roman soldier outfit. She is delighted and comments that her jailers usually don't read her request memos.

Gun and Sword: Rory dual-wields his gladius and a pulse pistol as they prepare for the Headless Monks to attack. Madame Vastra seems to have both her katana and a pulse rifle taken from the army, but she wouldn't be able to use them both at the same time.

Heroic BSOD: A minor one when Madame Vastra tells the Doctor that the child can be a weapon because it's modeled after him.

A much bigger one after a scathing What the Hell, Hero? from River: the Doctor realizes that the rest of the universe sees him as a dangerous and potentially insane warrior because of his actions. We haven't yet seen the full extent of this one, however.

Hidden Agenda Villain: Arguably, Madame Kovarian. She's clearly a mysterious one, and outside of getting rid of the Doctor, she doesn't seem to have revealed any major ambitions... as of yet. It's not even clear exactly why she wants the Doctor gone. But what is clear, if she can play the Doctor like a fiddle, she's gotta be one Magnificent Bastard, and she must have things in store for the universe, and specifically Melody/Little!River.

Hypocritical Humour: Vastra. She frequently shows disdain for mammals and implies she devours ones who annoy her, though she is also involved in a lesbian relationship with a human woman. She does seem to try to catch herself when she's being rude at least, commenting "how do you put up with me?".

Leitmotif: The music that plays when River reveals she is Melody Pond is the same heard when the Doctor was given a Viking funeral in "The Impossible Astronaut" and the girl regenerated at the end of "Day of the Moon".

Let's Get Dangerous / Regained Several Levels of Badass: The baddies—not to mention the audience—get a vicious reminder that between being a nurse and being a companion, Rory was the Lone Centurion. Begins the episode by scaring the crap out of a legion of Cybermen to determine Amy's location, and only gets better from there.

As for the Doctor himself, this is not one of those episodes where he scares off his enemies by saying "You're in a library, look me up." No, this is one of the times when he shows exactly why everyone's so scared of him.

American viewers managed to get both moods at once when, during the scene where the Doctor is running to warn Amy about her flesh!Daughter, BBC America decided to speed up everything to a near comedic pace.

Mook Horror Show: One gets the impression the Doctor is the monster in this particular episode.

Even Rory gets this treatment in the Cold Open, particularly with this bit of dialogue:

Mythology Gag: When Rory asks if there could be more than one Doctor, River says 'that's another sort of birthday', referencing the multi-Doctor anniversary specials (and perhaps hinting there will be another for the 50th anniversary?) as well as a very likely threesome.

Also possibly a reference to the events of "First Night / Last Night" where the Doctor has to deal with trying to keep three River Songs from bumping into each other, each mistaking his TARDIS as the one that was meant to pick them up in their respective present.

Not So Different: Rory and the Doctor. When the chips are down, Rory will destroy anything in his path to get back the people who were taken from him. Despite being the person who usually tries to save everyone, you do NOT want to piss off Rory and underestimate the fury of the Last Centurion. Sound familiar?

"When A Good Man Goes To War", the title proves equally true of both Rory and the Doctor.

Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Implied. If "Doctor" means "mighty warrior" in the language of the Gamma Forest, the Doctor must do/have done something pretty spectacular even by his standards during his visit there, especially if it's from only one visit.

Rory's entire fight with the Headless Monks. Particularly given how they fight with a Laser Sword while he's dual wielding a gun and sword.

Pyrrhic Victory: Definitely one for the Doctor. He raised an army, kicked the ass of the bad guys with them, took control of the army and even got back the real Amy without a single fatalityup to that point. However, part of the mission was to save Amy and Rory's newborn daughter with them, which they failed and even some of the lives of the Doctor's army were lost in the battle. However, after finding out who River Song really is, the Doctor is reinvigorated to rescue her infant self. The battle may have been lost (or won, as the case may be), but the war is far from over.

"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Given to the Doctor by River Song no less. It basically consists of "you're so successful at what you do that it's starting to scare people, so that whole non-violent schtick of yours is starting to seem kinda flimsy from where everyone else is standing".

The 'Run away' speech the Doctor gives to Colonel Manton comes across as a sort of "The Reason You Will Suck Speech".

Red Baron: Rory, the Lone/Last Centurion. Post Big Bang 2, his standing guard over the Pandorica has become part of the Earth's official mythology, and will never be forgotten.

Red Herring: A magnificent one that had been building up for a year: whether or not the Doctor and Amy were doing it. Everyone around them assumed that they were, and it would have very neatly explained the baby. While everyone was busy fretting and Starboarding over that, the real secret of the baby is something completely different.

Since the cot is the Doctor's, and River seems to point at its engraved Gallifreyan text when the Doctor asks her who she is, there are also hints that River could be a future incarnation of him. This was already hinted at in "The Doctor's Wife" when it was revealed that Time Lords can change sex when regenerating. It was David Tennant's personal pet theory while filming River's first appearance, and when he revealed that to Steven Moffat during the audio commentary, Moffat was amused enough to tease the fans with it a little in this episode.

The giant "door lock override" button. The guard dramatically inches his way toward it, almost making you think he'll succeed... and then Vastra tongue-whips him unconscious as if it's nothing.

And vice versa. When Amy tells Melody there's a man who will stop at nothing to come and save them, she's talking about Rory.

Unwitting Pawn: A partial example. Colonel Manton knew that he had to lose to spring the trap... but from the looks of it, he didn't know that he'd have to sacrifice his reputation to do so, or that Madame Kovarian would order him to do it.

Villainous Valor: We all knew how outclassed Colonel Manton's forces would be, still remarkable they got as far as they did.

What the Hell, Hero?: River and the Doctor actually exchange these speeches with one another at the end. In fact, it could well be said that the entire, desperate attempt by the Clerics to create a weapon usable against the Doctor served as an enormous one of these.

Xanatos Gambit / Xanatos Speed Chess: The Doctor's plan to take Demons Run. Disguise himself as a Headless Monk and start an Enemy Civil War amongst the enemy factions. Colonel Manton gets around this by ordering his forces to lay down their arms to get the Monks to back off... leading the Doctor to call in the Judoon and Silurian forces to capture them in one fell swoop. Manton tries to counter this by using the base's automatic distress signal... at which point the Doctor orders in the air force of Spitfires armed with Dalek weaponry to blow their communications array sky high. How much of this he planned and how much he improvised along the way is anyone's guess.